Britain’s colonial botany, tiny landscapes and great bohemian outlaws – the week in art

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Exhibition of the week

The Singh Twins and Flora Indica
A look at the colonial history behind British botany, plus a survey of Indian botanical art in the age of the East India Company.
Kew Gardens, London, until 12 April

Also showing

Miniature Worlds
The compressed landscapes of the great rural artist Thomas Bewick, shown here with other creators of small worlds including Beatrix Potter.
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, from 18 October to 28 February

Egypt: Influencing British Design 1775-2025
A survey of ancient Egypt’s influence on British culture, in a house whose crypt includes one of the first Egyptian sarcophagi ever brought to London.
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, until 18 January

Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun
These gay outlaw artists were heroes of 20th-century British bohemia, but how does their art hold up?
Charleston in Lewes, Sussex, until 12 April

El Anatsui
The Ghanaian master of the bottle-top and product label shows new works in wood.
Goodman Gallery, London, until 19 November and October Gallery, London, until 29 November

Image of the week

Visitors look at a work called Untitled – Bed by artist Permindar Kaur at Frieze London, 2025.

There was madness, millionaires and some of the best facelifts money can buy at Frieze art fair this year, which is a beautiful, stupid, pompous, ridiculous extravaganza drenched in champagne excesses. It also has stunning works. Read our review.

What we learned

A Picasso painting has vanished on the way to an exhibition

Taylor Swift fans are flocking to a German museum

Artists Shepard Fairey, Damien Hirst and Invader joined forces to create a revolting visual soup

Máret Ánne Sara failed to impose herself on the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall

Diane Keaton was also a prolific photographer ‘with a cool and deadly eye’

In the US, artists are taking the fight to Trump

Nigerian art revived Britain’s cultural landscape

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Basquiat would have either loved or hated all the merch

A new exhibition finally gave ancient Egyptian artists their due

Artists have used collage to express harsh truths at a London show

Masterpiece of the week

Autumn by David Teniers the Younger, c 1644

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness? Time of falling leaves and Mike Oldfield chimes presaging Halloween? For David Teniers the Younger, the arrival of autumn doesn’t mean any of these. It means time for a drink, because the wine harvest is here. Other artists too have celebrated this time as the season of the vintage, from Poussin to Cy Twombly, but Teniers doesn’t even bother with scenes of the grape harvest. He cuts to the chase and portrays a plump tipsy bloke holding up a glass. His shiny face looks vaguely at us but he balances the glass perfectly, as he dangles the flagon he’s emptied in his other hand. Once Teniers, from Antwerp, was the most famous of 17th-century north European artists of everyday life: his ruddy realism was seen as the essence of this so-called “genre” tradition. As such he influenced British artists such as Hogarth and David Wilkie to paint ordinary, unprettified human existence.
National Gallery, London

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